Tomorrow is International Women’s Day and I’ve spent much of my Friday so far pretending no one really cares about events such as “IWD.”

This is an innately male inclination, it occurs to me, given us men have been in the firing line now for an uncomfortable amount of years (is it ten already?) hearing about the importance of women’s empowerment and gender equality.

I have blogged time and again about gender issues, largely because I worked for an organisation whose mission was to empower women, and address the inequalities they face. Aside from being paid money to support this mission, I happened to also fundamentally believe that gender equality was critical for the world.

Perhaps naively, in December 2011, I wrote this piece on my way back from a conference in India, in which I stated I was “hopeful” that women’s empowerment was on the rise. Businesses, I gushed, were hosting conferences on the topic, no less.

“Hopeful”. Not a great statement of mine to re-read. Kind of ironic?

No matter that the UK suffragette movement was the best part of one hundred years old, as I was offering my insights. I was hopeful.

Nor was I put off, at the time, by some of the infamous predictions being bandied around by “the Scandinavian’s” that gender equality would only be realised “in about 150 year’s time”. And that was just in Norway.

Again, I remained hopeful, in Delhi on that trip, that things were changing.

I’d not cared, either, to really listen to those experts in my field who spoke of the “generational change” needed to have any impact on any social norms.

Nor had I accepted the caution presented to me, by colleagues, suggesting that bringing business to the table (this was my job at the time) to discuss women’s empowerment was, in fact, a flawed long-term strategy.

No, I was in India, I had spoken to people at a conference, and I was convinced the tides were turning.

Quite content with my findings, I was excited to fly home to my two daughters. They were not going to have to contend with half the pressures and discriminations dealt with by their mother, their grandmothers, or even their great-great-great grandmothers.

Re-reading my post from 2011, I do want to be celebrating IWD tomorrow, confident that the arc of things has shifted in the direction I foresaw. And, I am sure, over the weekend, I’ll read more about the positive changes that those organisations, and individuals, who do care about IWD, will be posting and sharing.

There have been things to celebrate. However, in my own words, summing up my Delhi trip (and what appears to be something of a get-out-jail-free card) I closed with this:

“ultimately…real change happens when we look within ourselves, and take responsibility for our actions, our perceptions, and place a value on those of others”

Not too bad an ending for a naive hopeful.

Wind forward a few years, and COVID-19 is upon us. The pandemic had horrific consequences for many millions of people. It seems to me that we also came close, during it, to experiencing many similar things together, not all of which were horrendous. We placed value on others during lockdown and, for some, I think that helped partially dilute these normative gender dynamics that have set the bar for our species for so long.

It was a “re-set” for sure. But, not for all, and looking back, not for long.

Today, with another IWD upon us, I can’t express enough how short it still feels we’ve fallen, of even the slightest tilt in the right direction.

Because, it’s still men.

Everywhere, and in charge of everything – men.

They control the world politically, commercially, financially, legally, militarily, judicially, and technologically.

Men run the world’s infrastructure, transportation, and the world’s media.

Men control natural resources and they dominate global relations and diplomacy.

Men head up religion and faith-based institutions, they govern sport and academia.

Men lead construction and real estate sectors, they are in charge of the world’s agriculture and food systems.

The leadership of healthcare and pharmaceutical industries is mostly male. They manage hospital boards, they fund medical innovations.

Even outside our planet, it’s men – who else? – leading our space agencies.

So what, you ask?

Some would claim the world is healthier, richer, more connected, more knowledgeable, more innovative, and more “prosperous” than ever before in our history. Thanks to men.

While others would suggest we’re experiencing the highest inequalities in society (which show no sign of decreasing) and face the most pressing environmental and societal catastrophes the world has seen. Also, thanks to men.

Men giveth, and then men taketh away? What is the conclusion to draw here, as we’ve no alternative model to use as some kind of controlled experiment?

We don’t know what any other dynamic looks like, because we’ve never got close to shifting from what we have always had.

Perhaps I’m perched on the fence of this argument? Which, you could say, is a comfortable compromise for a middle-aged white male like me – trying to learn from everyone, trying to see new perspectives, trying to be balanced. Try, try, try.

There has to be merit in seeking out balance, in remaining curious, in never being satisfied with the answer to a problem. I will stick by that and, fingers crossed, when I read this back in 2039, I’ve not reneged on that aspiration.

But, for today, I cannot wish enough to speed up the tidal changes that I alluded to fourteen years ago, and which Emily Pankhurst fought for last century, and others before her over the millennia.

If it took one thousand more #MeToo’s to fan the flames of the tiny spark which the original campaign ignited, then let’s have those one thousand now, and then one thousand more.

It simply cannot be as it has always been. It must, must shift. More women making decisions, more women taking control, more women shaping our world.

The picture above is of Audre Lord, writer and civil rights activist.

It was she who said:

“They tell us to shrink ourselves, to make space for their egos. But I will not be small so that they can feel big.”

And it was my dear friend, Milli Hill, speaking today in Prague at the launch of her book, who quoted Lord in her own masterstroke of a speech, entitled: A Life Less Apologetic.

It’s Milli’s words that have inspired me today and, in turn, those of Audre Lord and others she cites. More women shaping our world.

I am no longer ‘hopeful’. We need a Revolution.